Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Second part - VII. Forestry - 1. The Forests. By Th. Örtenblad, Chief Master of Forest, Umeå - Administration of the public forests
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ADMINISTRATION OF THE PUBLIC FORESTS.
627
administration of the Forest service. This administration nowadays
includes (as before shown) Crown parks, driftsand plantations, mine
forests, and many commons, forests attached to residences, and the Crown
farm forests let on lease. And in connection with the new general forest
legislation of 1903 (see below), special laws, in force from 1905, have
been promulgated concerning the forests belonging to towns and public
institutions, providing that these forests are to be placed under the
control of the Forest service. The question of putting all commons under
the administration of the Forest service is, however, not yet settled.
Forest Legislation in Sweden was first concerned with the
regulation of public forests. Mention is made of commons in the earliest
existing legal contracts and charters. Under that designation were
included those stretches of wooded land that intervened between the tracts
of cultivated country; these intervening stretches were considered by the
owners of the adjacent land as necessary, both for yielding them forest
produce and for allowing them an opportunity to extend the cultivated
land in their possession.
Hence these wooded tracts could not be appropriated by any one who
chose, as was the case with waste land. Sometimes, however, the name commons
is found applied to these waste lands, which by degrees came to be regarded
as State property. In the proclamation of Gustavus Vasa, of April 20, 1542,
it is declared that »uncultivated tracts of land belong to God, the King, and
the Swedish Crown». These tracts were not, however, dealt with exclusively as
property of the State; they were, on the contrary, held in readiness for the
furtherance of land-culture, on the one hand by apportionment of land for
colonization by settlers (in Norrland), and on the other by the grant of the right
>to such cultivators of the soil as do not enjoy it in woods of their own, to make
use of pasture, timber, fencing-material, leaves for fodder, birch-bark, peat and
bast, besides other things to be found there, to supply their own bare needs.»
This enactment gradually produced the impression in the minds of the people,
that these commons were public forest-land, belonging in some cases to parishes,
in others to hundreds. Those that belonged to the parishes have with few
exceptions been divided between the shareholders, while those belonging to the
hundreds remained intact and under the control of the State. In some instances
the tracts were retained as State property and were transferred to Crown parks,
after explications having been made concerning their nature.
The Swedish Forest Service originates from a Venery service
instituted already in the 16th century. Earlier mentioned »deer and
bird-shots» and »rangers and deerkeepers» did not form a body collected.
The principal work of the Venery service was till the beginning of the
nineteenth century also connected with shooting, although already in
the middle of the seventeenth century attention seems to have been paid
to forestry. On behalf of forestry the Venery service still did not do
very much, until, after the institution of the Forest Institute in 1828,
the officials were given opportunity to gather special information in
forestry. After the institution of a Forest Board, in 1859, the chief of
that also became chief of the Forest- and Venery service.
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